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Title: Midinettes on strike Author: May Picqueray Language: en Topics: repression, strike, women, World War I, Paris Source: Retrieved on 10th September 2021 from https://forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/midinettes-on-strike-by-may-picqueray/
The small hands, the midinettes, these small bees of the great fashion
houses, from where the masterpieces worn by artists and ladies of the
Paris and international bourgeoisie come, these young girls who you can
meet in squares or at the Tuileries, at lunchtime, sharing their meagre
meals with the birds, their friends, are very badly paid, live on very
little, dress with almost nothing, but always with taste. The midinettes
are known in all of Paris for their laughter, their chicness, and their
small artists’ hands.
But there’s a down-side to this. Today, they are on strike. They can no
longer manage. Bosses who exploit them shamelessly don’t want to hear
anything about granting them a pay increase. So, they take to the
streets.
There is a meeting this afternoon at the trade union hall, near
République. Our friends Margot, Marie, Mado Ferré are on strike. Thérèse
and I decide, in solidarity, to join them, to bring them our support.
The room is packed. Girls and women follow one another on the platform,
they explain the situation in couture: whether it is in workshops or in
rooms, they are exploited all the same. They will not give up, a
delegation is chosen to start negotiations with the bosses’ union.
When they leave, it is like sparrows taking flight. They laugh, hail one
another. Surprise: we can see several hundred guys from the building
industry and road workers who have stopped work to bring their moral and
material support to the midinettes. That’s great! They are cheered and
even kissed. It is decided to go demonstrate in front of the great
fashion houses, and then on the Champs Elysées. He guys give their arms
to the girls, and the picturesque and joyous march is ready to flow onto
the Grands Boulevards. Suddenly, a squadron of republican guards shows
up on the République square, surrounding open carriages. Poincaré1 sits
in the front carriage. The rest of the government in the other ones.
“It is Poincaré, you know, ‘the man who laughs in cemeteries’…”
He is simply here to inaugurate a very strange exhibition on the
République square. In some sheds, machines have been set up in which we
could see photographic sights of life in the tranches, the transport of
the wounded, the dead lying on the battlefields, and all the horrors of
war. And, on top of this, the Paris public had to pay to see that…
We are at the edge of the pavement, ready to join the march, Poincaré
gets off, waving at the crowd who came to salute him. All of a sudden,
Mado leaves us, walks towards him, raises her hand and shouts at his
face: “Bastard! You came to see your dead!” Immediately she is seized by
the guard and handed to the police who rushed to the scene (and so are
we as we didn’t want to leave her); there we are embarked for the police
station, mistreated and pushed into a corner like thieves, then
interrogated by the commissar who gives us such an earful!…
We are thrown into cells and kept overnight. We weren’t proud! What was
to become of us? Fortunately this “attentat” was not taken seriously.
There was probably an order not to talk about it to the press, in other
words to stifle the case.
We got off lightly, but we were furious we had missed the march on the
Champs Elysées.